Ayakashi

Ayakashi is an anthology series adapting three classical Japanese horror stories into animated form. That makes it sound like an eat-your-vegetables series, but it's willing to anime-ify the stories enough to make them more palatable to a mass audience. There are lots of things you can fault the series for, but being too dry and educational isn't one of them. (It also reminds me of the superior Aoi Bungaki/Blue Literature.)

The first two stories are pretty humdrum, full of bad people doing terrible things to each other and being punished for them by supernatural entities. The animation is good, but not really interesting enough to be worth viewing by itself. The main issues is that these stories just aren't scary -- they're more of a historical tragedy and a fantasy story respectively, although they don't do too well at those genres either.

The third arc suffers from similar writing issues but is noteworthy for being the directing debut of Kenji Nakamura, one of the most striking and bizarre directors working in TV anime today. These episodes might be an example of some of his best visual work, with strange designs and beautiful effects, producing if not horror at least a kind of intimidation. This story (the last three episodes) is worth seeking out, if only as a visual treat. Since the arcs are completely separate stories, you can safely skip the rest of the series.

Since the first two segments are excellent, with the first a 9 out of 10 and the second a 8 out of 10. Where the series crashes is in the third segment, especially the 9th and 10th episode are equally beautifully drawn AND extremely boring. Nothing really interesting happens for two episodes. I'll give it a 6 out of 10 just for the ending and the artstyle but other than that I don't see real reasons to recommend it. I hope the spin-off I'm planning to watch turns out better than the original. On a minor complain, since this series is so heavily based on Japanese mythology and historical facts I would have put an intro based on Enka music instead of rap. This one does not fit well.

If you expect to be scared witless by these series, you should probably reconsider watching them. Japanese horror is of a very different kind than western one, as everybody who ever saw the Japanese version of "The Ring" and compared it to the US one is probably aware of.

So "horror" in this case doesn't mean your heart pumping madly or sudden scares - it is much less bold and will instead be leading your mind into the realms of the absurd, of the eery and the strange, maybe leaving you with a subtle feeling of fascination, maximum making you feel a bit weird. Having said that, here's the actual review:

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Out of the three very different stories (being actually made by completely different teams), the last one is definitely the most marvelous, enveloping the viewer in a burst of colours and patterns, helping to create a fantastic and surreal atmosphere. Leading figure is a wonderfully mysterious medicine seller one can never quite figure out. (This storyline was by the way adapted to be an independent series with overall 12 episodes, called "Mononoke")

However, one who appreciates subtle storytelling and doesn't need a firework of explosions and action to feel satisfied might also like the two others, as they present a very classically Japanese experience.

If you love being tickled by strangeness and bizarre stories without actually looking for fear or thrill, this will be worth your time.

I wish more people knew this piece of art!! The drawing style is too beautiful!! They are three stories that I think are divided into 3 episodes or 2 each. About the opening song: Yeah...is good more or less. The second 0:09 is good, traditional. But the other part, I feel that is not consistent with the traditional Japan. The ending song is better, it is very beautiful, very beautiful, majestic. The OST totally majestic, beautiful, for example Jyo - 01 - Ayakashi Japanese Classic Horror OST. It is beautiful but get chills. I'm glad to have known this beautiful anime. I met him on a video where gathered anime recommendations of terror.

NOTE :- it was my 269th Japanese anime . 1st story - interesting , somewhat predictable , and last part has bad anime quality 2nd story- normal and boring 3rd story- 😍 is love , out of nowhere one of the peculiarly good animation , I bet you it's marvelous and is the reason to gave it 8 stars.